Meaningless Battles...

[TheMightyMollusk]

Reminds me of Disgaea 2 on the ps2. Chapter 3 sets you up against Demon Lord Etna who is Level 1,000 and your party is on ng1 probably like lv20. No chance of winning at all, but if you come back on ng+ (or just grinded hard enough in the item world) you could win...and when you do, your MC inherits the title "Demon Lord" from Etna and loses the ability to battle Overlord Zenon (main antagonist), ending the game.

Same thing in Chapter...11 I think? The previous game's MC, Laharl, appears at Level 1,200 before the party. If you win, he throws an absolute hissy fit, leaps to orbit and glasses the whole planet with magical flames. I'd appreciate games to do stuff like alternate ends for beating what you're not expected to beat.

This reminds me of Breath of Fire 2. Towards the end, Ryu's mother has to sacrifice her life to open the way to Infinity so you can descend to fight the big bad. You can refuse, sparring Valerie's life.....but it triggers the bad ending, where the demons continue building their strength uninterrupted, until they shatter the gate and overrun the world.

[Hayden]

Killing everything on a first encounter would be rather boring. It would also end the story very quickly, leaving nothing to do.

As for what happens in 6.4, isn't that the villain calling on their back-up plan when they realize they can't win against us through their own strength?

Things just handed to you tend to have less meaning than the things you have to put effort into getting.

Naw, nobody wants anything handed to them. We just want the story to reward our victories, and better writing to progress the main plot.

[Hayden]

I am over meaningless trolling too but that doesn't stop it from happening every day on these forums.

Who's trolling? You?

I have a legitimate issue and posted a topic about it to discuss? Are you even familiar with what trolling is? Are you under the impression that anything that isn't lavish praise is trolling?

Y...you're allowed to take issue with the games you play? Y...you don't have to love everything?

[kaynide]

Not a fan of villains getting away because "of course they do" either.

IMO, there are a lot of ways you could make it work:

-the villain has minions run interference while he escapes, or the minions are the main threat while the villain is more of the pokemon master; either way they should be escaping while we are forced to deal with the minions, not post fight.
-the villain plays dead (or is in deed knocked out), but escapes when we let our guard down
-the victory would come at a cost we can't afford; as in an ally/town is critically injured and will die without immediate aid; nuclear option, etc.
-the villain does get to escape, but at their own great cost (loss of important ally; amputation; etc)
-Superman-Problem (The WoL can't be in two places at once, so we are forced to retreat)

[Hayden]

Not a fan of villains getting away because "of course they do" either.

IMO, there are a lot of ways you could make it work:

-the villain has minions run interference while he escapes, or the minions are the main threat while the villain is more of the pokemon master; either way they should be escaping while we are forced to deal with the minions, not post fight.
-the villain plays dead (or is in deed knocked out), but escapes when we let our guard down
-the victory would come at a cost we can't afford; as in an ally/town is critically injured and will die without immediate aid; nuclear option, etc.
-the villain does get to escape, but at their own great cost (loss of important ally; amputation; etc)
-Superman-Problem (The WoL can't be in two places at once, so we are forced to retreat)

^ any of these would have been better than . "HAHAHAH FINALLY I HAVE WAITED FOR THIS MOMENT"

"but...I won..."

"MWAHAHAHA!"

[MikkoAkure]

It actually doesn't, you can kill the Grafted Scion at the start.

I said “fights you’re supposed to lose” not “fights you can’t win”. You can win against the Grafted Scion, but you’re expected to lose and the games moves on with your loss. Some other soulslike games have the same thing and Sekiro has a twist on it with a beginning one where even if you win you lose anyway.

Not a soulslike or a JRPG, but Ghosts of Tsushima has one where even if you make the boss’s HP 0, it keeps going until you lose.


As far as the OP goes, I still don’t have a problem with it. Were we supposed to just accept Zenos was strong without fighting him directly until the very end of SB? Were we supposed to somehow kill Golbez in his own dimension where it’s already been established that he and everyone else can’t die?

We could have had a cutscene, but then the patch would have had even less content than it did.

It seems strange to be completely focused on the desire that everything you fight be required to be completely destroyed but you do you I guess.

[SannaR]

I feel like part of the problem is that the WoL never does much in fighting cut scenes. At most the game might cut back to us with a couple of mooks falling over, with the implication that we just finished them slightly off-screen. I get that having to make the scenes work with every race/class combo is a tall order (just look at the final scenes in Endwalker with a lalafell trying to fistfight Zenos, it's hilarious), but more often than not it ends up looking like we're just kinda waiting around for something important to happen.

Then there's the fact that it just doesn't make sense half the time. No matter how badly we're trouncing Zenos or Ran'jit, they just suddenly decide "Oh yeah, I'm supposed to win" and knock us flat. Golbez at least has the excuse of being in the Void, where nothing can permanently die anyway. We would've eventually tired out from repeatedly fighting him while he just keeps getting back up. Just would've been nice if they'd showed that somehow.

I think another point is that they don't know how to have the flow and animation look as though all of it is happening in real time. They want all of this dialogue in there and things look like it's Golbez is having a huge amount of time after he shrunk and lost his sword to give this speech. Where that scene and a few others (notably in Bozja) that end up working in the magical girl transformation and attack logic. Where it's not really taking the hero 10mins to transform or to unleash their attack. It's just that they want to show us the entirety of the attack/transformation unless the story calls for an interruption.

[SannaR]

Not a fan of villains getting away because "of course they do" either.

IMO, there are a lot of ways you could make it work:

-the villain has minions run interference while he escapes, or the minions are the main threat while the villain is more of the pokemon master; either way they should be escaping while we are forced to deal with the minions, not post fight.
-the villain plays dead (or is in deed knocked out), but escapes when we let our guard down
-the victory would come at a cost we can't afford; as in an ally/town is critically injured and will die without immediate aid; nuclear option, etc.
-the villain does get to escape, but at their own great cost (loss of important ally; amputation; etc)
-Superman-Problem (The WoL can't be in two places at once, so we are forced to retreat)

But that's why we fought him alone cause everyone else was busy or just lost to a voidsent version of their sibling. We left due to having an injured teammate and our extra protection starting to wane. As I said in my reply to Mollusk the devs want to give us all of this dialogue, but aren't able to have it happen at the speed they want to be showing it. Also what would you have made the trial be? Everyone expected to have a fight against Globez at some point. Sure they could have done it in a solo trial where we'd probably end up losing but then what would the trial be? Since they chose to have them tied to the MSQ.

[Payadopa]

Boss fights you're supposed to lose have been in RPGs for the past 30+ years and SE aren't the only ones to do it. Elden Ring even begins with one. It's just a narrative tool and I don't really see a problem with it unless it's an RPG with items and I end up wasting them, not knowing I was supposed to lose.

I get the item loss thing but why are you supposed to 'know' that you need to loose. It's supposed to instill tension or establish a threat. Other than that I agree.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I think the writing in a great majority of this game is fantastic. Many exciting and heartfelt moments. So I don’t share OPs opinion at all. Which is fine, they are entitled to it and it doesn’t impact me one way or another that they decide to denigrate it as lazy.